02375cam a22002657 4500001000700000003000500007005001700012008004100029100002200070245014500092260006600237490004200303500001400345520113400359530006101493538007201554538003601626690005601662690010101718690009601819710004201915830007701957856003802034856003702072w16021NBER20180218002607.0180218s2010 mau||||fs|||| 000 0 eng d1 aJensen, Robert T.10aEconomic Opportunities and Gender Differences in Human Capitalh[electronic resource]:bExperimental Evidence for India /cRobert T. Jensen. aCambridge, Mass.bNational Bureau of Economic Researchc2010.1 aNBER working paper seriesvno. w16021 aMay 2010.3 aGender differences in health and education are a concern for a number of developing countries. While standard theory predicts human capital should respond to market returns, social norms (e.g., disapproval of women working outside the home) may weaken or even sever this link for girls. Though many studies have examined the link between women's wages or labor force participation and investment in girls, two significant problems are the possibility of omitted variables bias and reverse causality, and difficulty in identifying which of several mechanisms (returns, bargaining power, income, etc.) link the two. To overcome these problems, we provided three years of recruiting services to help young women in randomly selected Indian villages get jobs in the business process outsourcing industry. Girls in treatment villages were more likely to be in school and had greater measured BMI. We argue that the design of the experiment (providing opportunities almost exclusively for young, unmarried women rather than current mothers) allows us to rule out that mechanisms other than increases in the returns explain our results. aHardcopy version available to institutional subscribers. aSystem requirements: Adobe [Acrobat] Reader required for PDF files. aMode of access: World Wide Web. 7aI0 - General2Journal of Economic Literature class. 7aJ16 - Economics of Gender • Non-labor Discrimination2Journal of Economic Literature class. 7aO12 - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development2Journal of Economic Literature class.2 aNational Bureau of Economic Research. 0aWorking Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research)vno. w16021.4 uhttp://www.nber.org/papers/w1602141uhttp://dx.doi.org/10.3386/w16021